Model Suggests How Life's Code Emerged From Primordial Soup

By working with the simplest amino acids and elementary RNAs, physicists led by Rockefeller University’s Albert J. Libchaber, head of the Laboratory of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics, have now generated the first theoretical model that shows how a coded genetic system can emerge from an ancestral broth of simple molecules.

The genetic code is a triplet code such that every triplet sequence of letters on messenger RNA corresponds to one of the 20 amino acids that make up proteins.

Molecular adapters called transfer RNAs (tRNAs) then convert this information into proteins that can achieve some specific tasks in the organism. .. However, primitive tRNAs were not as finicky as tRNAs are today and could load any amino acid known to exist during the time of prebiotic Earth. Without the ability of tRNAs to discriminate between various amino acids, such a random system might not be able to self-assemble into a highly organized code capable of supporting life.

At these concentrations, the scientists found that a vetting process began to unfold whereby tRNA and amino acid began to seek each other out.

Model Suggests How Life's Code Emerged From Primordial Soup
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